A. Related Applications
There are no applications related hereto heretofore filed in this or any foreign country.
B. Field of Invention
My invention generally relates to scrapers carried by a two point bucket hitch of a tractor and more particularly to such a scraper having both rigid and flexibly deformable scraping blades and releasably attachable auxiliary structures.
C. Description of the Prior Art
In the commercial arts generally, and especially in the agricultural branch thereof, it is often necessary to move substantial quantities of material by some type of scraping action and by reason of this requirement many and various scrapers have heretofore become known. Many of these scrapers have evolved into some sort of ancillary structure or implement, generally of a unified detachable nature, that is attached to and moved by a tractor type vehicle. My invention provides a new member of this class of scraper.
It is often desirable and sometimes necessary to use such scraper blades in dealing with particular materials that may not be amenable to a single type of scraping action. This may result from lack of homogeneity in the material, from various environmental and particularly weather conditions, from dealing with materials in different environs such as on the ground or on a hard uniform surface, from dealing with greater or lesser quantities of material or from other like causes. It also may be necessary to deal with materials by scraping either toward or away from a prime mover and to accommodate these functions a compound scraper with pivotally mounted wing member movable in either direction from alignment with a principal scraper member is required. In the prior art each of these functions generally has been accomplished, if at all, individually by a particular specialized structure adapted only to fulfil the particular function. Scrapers of the prior art generally have not effectively accomplished more than one such function because of their specialized nature. The instant invention seeks to provide a single scraper that will perform all of these functions effectively.
My invention has connecting mechanism for interconnection with the standard two point, so called "bucket hitch", of the common front-end loader or tractor so that the scraper may be used with such existing prime movers without modification of either scraper or prime mover. Many prior art devices have required specialized non-standard fastening and mounting means.
My scraper is of a compound nature, providing a central body pivotally mounting wing members which may be moved to allow scraping in either direction normal to the scraper body's principal surface and yet contain materials in an associated mass for simple collection. Many prior art scrapers either do not provide means to aid in amassing scraped material or to do so they must be moved in only one direction.
My scraper provides two elongate, spacedly adjacent depending blade elements, one rigid and constituting a downward extension of the lower portion of the principal scraper blade, and the other flexibly resilient, at a spaced distance from that rigid blade, and depending somewhat therebelow so that it may be independently used by appropriate vertical positioning of the principal blade. The two blades depend at an angle to each other so that either may be used in a pushing or a pulling scraping action in either direction reasonably normal to the faces thereof. Prior art devices have not provided double bladed scraping elements of differing nature to allow selective scraping action by either.
Each of the pivotal wing members of my scraper may releasably carry "L" shaped line elements with cooperating legs extending inwardly toward each other. These lines may be moved toward or away from each other by motion of the scraper wing members and thereby provide means of engaging a coherent mass of material, such as a bale of hay, for positional maintenance to allow movement, placement or transport. Hay moving elements of the tine type have generally not been associated with scraper structures in the prior art.
A substantially rectilinear bottom pan is provided for releasable attachment to the lower portion of my scraper to allow its use as a traditional agricultural front end loader. In the prior art, where buckets have been provided in combination with a scraper, they have generally not been removable from an associated prime mover and any scraping action has been carried out with the edge of the bucket, neither of which functions are required by my invention.
Various individual features of my invention have heretofore become known per se as indicated, but none of the prior art discloses all of its structural features in the unique synergistic combination herein specified and claimed to produce the functions necessarily produced. Similarly, no element of the prior art discloses how it might be combined with any other elements thereof to form the combination of my invention.